


It's been a hard days night

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Chicago PD (TV)
Genre: Affectionate Insults, Brotherly Affection, Gen, Gunshot Wounds, Hiding Medical Issues, Hurt Jay Halstead, Hurt/Comfort, Sleepovers, Unexpected Visitors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:55:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27397567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Jay rolled his eyes as he began shrugging off his jacket, his badge dangling from his neck and glinting in the lights. “Do you have any of your gear here? Like a first aid kit or something?”Will frowned. “Uh, I guess I’ve got a few of the basics. Sutures, bandages, gauze, bandaid, disinfectant. Nothing crazy, but I’ve got some stuff. Why?”Nodding, Jay finally pulled off his jacket with a slight grimace, “Good,” he said as he tossed his jacket over the back of the couch. “I think you had better go and get it.”
Relationships: Jay Halstead & Will Halstead
Comments: 10
Kudos: 111





	It's been a hard days night

**Author's Note:**

> Is this self-indulgent and unrealistic? Yes. Do I mind? Not really. this was mostly inspired by the imagery of Jay seated on the table, his legs resting on a chair, Will towering over him while they're both in a dark room illuminated by a single light above them. I don't know. it looked pretty. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy this x

It was either very late at night or incredibly early in the morning when Will was woken up from a deep sleep after a long and stressful day at work by a heavy knock on the door. He startled awake, blinking hard and swallowing his breath as he choked on a gasp. He paused, wondering if he had heard right or if it was just his imagination, before the knock came again, insistent and much louder, and he rolled out of bed.

The floorboards were cold under his bare feet as he tip-toed his way towards the front door, where he could see light from the hallway peaking in from under the door, too bright in the darkness. He pressed his ear to the door and could hear the scuffling of shoes against the carpet, quiet muttering just beyond the wood. The knock sounded again, jarring him, and he reached with sleep-slowed fingers for the handle of the baseball bat that leant against the doorway for just these sorts of emergencies. 

Cautiously, Will crept open the door, the hinges creaking too loudly in the still silence of his apartment, cracking the door open until the chain caught, just enough for him to peak out and see the silhouette of the figure outside. His grip tightened on the bat. “Hello?” he called, voice scratchy and thick with sleep. He scowled as he cleared it, the sound very harsh. “Who is it? What do you want?”

He was not at all prepared for an eyeball to swarm into his vision between the crack in the door, and he leapt back with a startled yelp. “Jesus, Will, you can’t even open the door for your own brother? Didn’t you have a rule about allowing me to come over at any time?”

In the darkness, Will scrambled for the baseball bat he had dropped before he removed the chain and swung the door open, holding the bat to his chest. His apartment was illuminated by the bright hallway light, and once he had blinked the dancing spots from his eyes, he saw that standing there awkwardly at the threshold, was his brother.

He tossed the baseball bat to the side and blinked at Jay in confusion. “Jay?” he demanded. “What the hell are you doing here so late? It’s… what time is it?”

“Almost four forty in the morning,” Jay said, almost bored. “Can I come in or what?”

Reeling, Will practically dragged Jay into his apartment with a fist in his shirt and shut the door behind him. He fumbled for the lightswitch and spun to face Jay as soon as the room lit up, standing awkwardly in his living room, eyeing the baseball bat with the stupid look he got sometimes when he was trying not to laugh. “What the hell are you doing here?” Will repeated, wanting not for the first time to wring his brother’s neck with his own hands. “Don’t you cops know what an acceptable time to wake someone up is?”

“Oh, quit you’re complaining,” Jay rolled his eyes as he began shrugging off his jacket, his badge dangling from his neck and glinting in the lights. “You’ve probably got to be up in a couple of hours for work anyway. Do you have any of your gear here? Like a first aid kit or something?”

Will frowned. “Uh, I guess I’ve got a few of the basics. Sutures, bandages, gauze, bandaid, disinfectant. Nothing crazy, but I’ve got some stuff. Why?”

Nodding, Jay finally pulled off his jacket with a slight grimace, “Good,” he said as he tossed his jacket over the back of the couch. “I think you had better go and get it.”

Immediately, Will felt a sinking feeling of dread that made his gut feel like it was falling down into his toes, and he was suddenly all-too-aware of the blooming, growing, incredibly dark spot on Jay’s grey shirt, the familiar and haunting stain of blood on his chest near his shoulder. “Jay, what the hell?” Will demanded as he instinctually reached for his little brother.

Just as instinctually, Jay smacked him away, wincing a little at the sharp movement. “Medical kit?” he reminded unhelpfully, letting a little impatience slip into his voice. “Now? Please?”

Without a thought, Will sprinted down the hall, nearly slipping on the smooth floorboards before coming to a stop before the hall cupboard. He flung it open with such force that it smashed against the walls, and he couldn’t find a tiny part of himself to care about the neighbour’s reaction, because he was digging through fallen towels for the shoulder bag he kept in his home just for emergencies and pulled it from the mess like an archaeologist recovering a long-forgotten artifact. He ran back to Jay all before taking a single breath.

Panting and out of breath, Will returned to the lounge room to see that Jay had already started the struggle of removing his shirt. He glanced over his shoulder as Will returned, his bag gangling loudly. “Took you long enough,” he tried for a smile, but it fell flat.

Ignoring him, Will began removing things from the couch and tossed them unceremoniously onto the floor. “Do you want to tell me what the hell happened to you?”

“Got into a gunfight tonight,” Jay said like he was discussing what he wanted for dinner. “Chased him through the streets, under bridges. We got him, though.”

“Great, fantastic,” Will said sarcastically. “But that doesn’t explain the blood.”

“He hit me,” Jay shrugged, and hissed as he was reminded. “Ow.”

“Is there a reason that you’re here, in my apartment at five in the morning?”

“I freaked and told Voight that the bullet hit the vest, so I couldn’t go to the hospital or he’d know that I was lying to him.”

Shaking his head, Will pointed harshly at the couch. “Sit.”

Jay looked at the couch for a moment, seeming to consider all his options, before he looked past Will towards his dining room. “Maybe the table would be better,” he suggested, and Will already felt like he needed a stress nap despite only just waking up.

Pursing his lips, Will moved around the couch and to the dining table, depositing the bag on the couch before hunting for more supplies. “Fine,” he said as he unplugged the lamp on the coffee table. “Table then.”

Silently, Jay shuffled from the couch to the dining room while Will busied himself with unplugging power cords and maneuvering appliances around, and ultimately resulting with a setup that he was somewhat happy with. He would have much preferred an operating theatre, but he was smart enough to not even suggest such a thing. Jay hopped up onto the table once Will tapped it twice to signal the OK, and rested both feet on one of the chairs. Will unzipped the bag and dug through it with the rattling of metal. “I hope you didn’t like this shirt,” he said quickly before he began to cut it away, not bothering to wait for a reply.

When he was satisfied that Jay wasn’t going to complain, he tossed the ruined shirt into the bin and adjusted the light so it was directed at Jay’s bleeding shoulder. It could have been much worse than it was, but Will still didn’t like the blood crusted around the wound and the lack of an exit. Or the fact that there was a bullet in his brother’s shoulder at all.

“I can’t believe you,” he scoffed as he gently turned Jay this way and that so he could see from all angles. “I thought we agreed- no more getting shot. This bullet could have severed the brachial artery. ”

“Well, I’m still alive, so obviously it didn’t,” Will could practically feel Jay rolling his eyes at him. “You worry too much, man. I get shot once and it’s like the end of the world.”

Before he replied. Will retrieved the cotton swabs, alcohol wipes, needle-nosed tweezers and antiseptic balm from his bag and laid it all out on the table. “I think I worry the perfect amount, considering my brother is sitting on my dining table at five in the morning asking me to take a bullet out of his shoulder.”

He felt Jay stiffen beneath him and resisted the urge to insist that he relax. “Will-”

“This is going to sting,” he warned before Jay could finish, and tipped the disinfectant onto the cotton swab before gently wiping the blood away. He was careful to avoid the wound itself for now and focused on cleaning the area of blood. Jay hissed at the rough treatment on his tender skin, but he didn’t complain, and he grit his teeth when Will threw away the bloodied swab. “You’re a very lucky man, Jay. This could have been so much worse than it was. I can’t see any broken bones, and you’re not dead yet so you didn’t hit any arteries…” 

He trailed off as he wandered to the kitchen for a couple of cups. He filled one up with water from the sink. Jay didn’t move when Will came back around to stand in front of him. “I’m really sorry about this.”

“Don’t be. It’s what brothers do,” Will said, but he knew that in reality, there was probably no other sibling relationship in the world that was like theirs. Jay got shot on the job, he goes to Will to stitch him back up in secret. Will has someone giving him trouble, and Jay would always be there to deal with it for him. That’s just the way they were. “The bullet is still in your shoulder. I’m going to have to get it out.”

“I assumed so,” Jay said. “That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? So I don’t have to dig it out myself?”

Instinctually, Will felt a familiar panic. “Please tell me that you didn’t try to fish the bullet out with your fingers.”

The prick actually looked like he was on the verge of laughing. “Of course not, Will. Leave it to the professionals, right?”

“The real professionals are on duty in the trauma bay at Med,” Will said absently as he dug through his bag for gloves. “I’m just some really tired dude who kinda knows some stuff.”

“I still trust you more than I trust any of the other doctors at Med,” Jay said easily, and despite the circumstances, Will felt something warm bloom in his chest.

As he carefully pulled the blue surgical gloves over his hands, Will eyed the needle-nosed tweezers resting on the table beside the bottle of disinfectant and the empty glass. “So,” he said, just to take his mind off of what he was about to do, and unscrewed the lid off of the disinfectant and poured a small layer inside the empty glass. “Do you want to tell me how this happened or is it confidential police nonsense?”

For a long while, Will wasn’t sure if Jay was going to answer, his eyes trained carefully as Will went on with his ministrations, wound tight like a taut wire. “He was a bomber. We’d had him on our radar for a while, but we haven’t been able to catch him,” Jay said. “He was setting up explosives at a school, and I chased him out into the streets, and he turned around and shot me before Ruzek and Atwater tackled him into an alley and cuffed him. I don’t know what kind of ammunition was used, ballistics are still in process. Looked like a weird gun though, so it might be something old, or homemade.”

Pursing his lips, Will finally picked the tweezers up and washed them carefully in the cup of antiseptic. “At least you caught the guy, right?” he asked. Jay shrugged and winced. Will placed a hand on his shoulder to keep him still. “Don’t move. You know, I would feel much better if there was an exit wound here. The hydraulic shock could still cause extensive damage even if the bullet didn’t, and an exit wound would have expelled most of the necrotic tissue to prevent infection…”

He paused when he felt a cold hand on his wrist. He glanced down to see Jay looking up at him with gentle eyes, looking tired and calm and a little hopeful, “Will,” he said softly. “I get it. I know. I’m lucky and I could have been killed. I know about all the risks, and what could have happened. But right now I just need you to get the bullet out, alright? And then you can yell at me when it’s done.”

Biting his lip, Will nodded, and Jay dropped his hand back down to his lap. “Alright,” he agreed. “How do you want to do this? Would you prefer we stay silent, or would talking help take your mind off of it?"

“You’re the doctor,” Jay teased, that grin Will remembered looking too harsh in the lamplight. “I differ to your judgement.”

“Sure,” Will snorted, “We’ll see how long that lasts.”

It was all fun and games now, but Will knew that soon enough, Jay was going to be in a world of pain. Jay seemed to know it too, and he worried at his bottom lip as Will appraised the wound again, as if he knew what the next step was before Will had even decided upon it. 

Reluctantly, Will braced himself, gripping onto Jay’s shoulder with an almost painfully tight hold as what he was about to do in the relative darkness of his apartment kitchen really hit him like a tonne of bricks. “Alright,” he said as he reached for the needle-nosed tweezers sitting in the glass of disinfectant. He wiped them off on a paper towel, and Jay watched him closely. “This is probably going to hurt, alright? If we were at the hospital, I would have given you a sedative or some sort of anaesthesia, but-”

“Will,” Jay interrupted, surprisingly softly. Will wasn’t sure if he was trying to be comforting or if the anticipation for what was about to happen and the pain he was going to feel was smoothing out his jaded edge. “It’s fine, I get it. I wouldn’t have let you give me a needle anyway, so really, the only difference is the noise and Voight hovering over your shoulder.”

The thought of Voight finding out about Jay’s lie and Will’s involvement made him shiver. “You and needles,” he tried to joke. “I’ll never understand it. You’re more than happy to go to war and get shot at every day, but getting a flu shot gets you shaking in your boots.”

“I don’t know anyone who wants to get stabbed with needles. You’re the weird one here, choosing to spend most of your time in a hospital,” that managed a smile out of Jay, but it was gone as quickly as it arrived. “Come on, Will. Quit stalling. Let’s get going.”

“Well, pardon me if I’m putting off digging through my brother's shoulder to fish out a bullet,” Will retorted as he readied himself. “Alright, here we go. Do you want me to count down?”

“No,” Jay bit out. “Just do it already.”

Silently, Will re-adjusted his grip on Jay’s shoulder, slippery with blood, and fumbled with the tweezers until they were settled in the right position, and brought the tweezers into the bleeding wound. Jay grit his teeth so tight that Will could hear his jaw creaking as Will dug around in his shoulder, the familiar feeling still as gross and disturbing as the first time. 

Maybe Will shouldn’t have been so surprised that Jay was stubborn enough to not make noise despite the enormous amount of pain he must have been feeling, but he did screw his eyes shut as Will twisted the tweezers around within his flesh to search for the unknown bullet buried somewhere deep within the muscle. Will wanted to reassure him in some way that it would be over soon and that he was trying to be gentle, but he knew that nothing he could say would really help and that if anything, his attempts to lighten the situation would only make it worse. Jay hated to be seen as weak, hated asking for help and being taken care of, so the fact that he had come to Will at all meant that he already knew how bad it could potentially be and that he was willing to embarrass himself just to have Will help him out when he probably could have done a poor job of it himself. 

Eventually, Will felt the glumly familiar clinking of metal against metal, and with a little adjusting, he managed to clamp the tweezers around the bullet and removed it as carefully as he could from where it had wedged itself into Jay’s shoulder. They both looked at it, glistening wetly with fresh blood under the light, before he dropped it into the glass of water, the blood diffusing and turning the clear water an off pink. 

He waited a few more moments in silence to ensure Jay wasn’t in any danger of bleeding out before he let out a sigh of relief. Jay must have gotten the reaction he was waiting for because his shoulders relaxed and he slowly worked his jaw.

“Alright,” Will wiped his hands on his pants. “I’ve got some basic stitches and a pressure bandage. And some painkillers.”

He wandered off to search for a glass of water, the painkillers as promised and shoved them into Jay’s hands before his brother could stand. “Sit still, I’m not done yet.”

“You must be the slowest doctor I’ve ever met,” Jay mumbled halfheartedly as he shook some painkillers into his hand. Will decided that he didn’t want to know how many he was going to take, and busied himself with searching through his bag for supplies.

“I’m the only doctor you know who’s willing to put up with your bullshit, so I suggest you suck it up and stop your complaining,” Will replied. He was very pleased with the smile he managed to get out of Jay.

Eventually, when he had snapped off the last stitch and had put his suture kit away, Will wrapped Jay’s shoulder with a pressure bandage despite his protests and stepped back to admire his handy work. “Not bad for being woken up at five in the morning with limited supplies,”

Jay lowered his head, looking bashful. “Yeah, I’m really sorry about that. I just didn’t want to get caught out lying to Voight, and I didn’t know where else to go. I won’t do it again.”

Turning away to zip up his bag, Will snorted. “Don’t be stupid. It’s what brothers are for, right? I’m glad you came. Otherwise, I would have heard about it tomorrow at work and I would have been worrying about you all day. At least I know for sure you’re going to be alright,” he ran a hand through his hair, suddenly realizing that he must have looked like a mess. Jay was still in the clothes he wore to work, besides the discarded jacket and bloodied shirt now lying in a pile on the floor. “Speaking of, I’ve got an early shift tomorrow, but when you wake up I want you to make your way there. I won’t tell anyone what happened, but I want to prescribe you some antibiotics to make sure that doesn’t get infected.”

“Yeah, I’ll meet you there tomorrow,” Jay said as he stood and began collecting his things. “Thanks again for this, Will.”

“The hell do you think you’re doing?” Will asked as he shoved Jay onto the couch, maybe a little harder than was necessary, but Jay stumbled backwards and collapsed ungracefully onto the couch, raising his arms and looking at Will in surprise. “You’re sleeping here for the rest of the night. No way in hell am I letting you go home like this, and God only knows how you got here in the first place.”

“Didn’t you say that you have an early shift?” Jay retorted. “What’s the point?”

Rolling his eyes, Will started cleaning up his dining table turned make-shift medical gurney. “I don’t have to be here to make sure you’re not going to steal anything. You can lock the place up when you leave, come by work and give me the keys. I have no problem with you being here when I’m out. Besides, I want to make sure you’re taking it easy for the next few days,” his eyes narrowed at Jay. “You  _ are  _ going to take it easy for a few days, right?”

Laughing, Jay raised his hands in surrender. “Nothing but desk duty for the next week or so. Nothing to worry about. It’s been quiet at work anyway,” his voice turned surprisingly gentle, and he gnawed at his bottom lip. “Thanks, Will. I mean it. I don’t want to think about how that might have turned out if you hadn’t answered that door.”

“Well, next time, text me,” Will said. “I nearly whacked your brains out. You scared the shit out of me.”

That shit-eating grin was back on Jay’s face, and Will was too tired to remember how much he hated it. “You couldn’t have even if you tried. Your technique is terrible.”

“Very funny,” Will rolled his eyes. He grabbed a blanket from the back of a recliner and chucked it at Jay, instinctually went to grab it with his injured arm before he flinched and the blanket hit him in the face, much to Will's pleasure. “Now shut up and go to sleep. I’ve got a couple more hours of shut-eye to get before my beauty sleep is complete.”

“You’re going to need more than a couple of hours to get any beauty sleep,” Jay teased as he pulled the blanket over him. 

“You can’t sleep if you’re flapping your gums,” Will said over his shoulder as he began turning off all the lights. Gentler, he said, “If you need me, just shout, alright? If your stitches rip, or you feel any pain, or it starts to bleed, or-”

“Got it,” Jay said. “Call if I need you. Thanks.”

“No worries,” Will said. “Just get some sleep. Something tells me that you’re going to need it if you’re going to survive tomorrow.”

As Will re-entered his bedroom, he heard Jay chuckle quietly, tired and sore, and he thought better of closing the door behind him. Instead, he went back to bed after a rather harrowing night, lulled to sleep by his brothers soft, even breathing and his eventual snorting relieved that, with his aid, his brother got to survive another night.


End file.
